Castings experts help a multi-national company

Cti’s Richard Gould with an SLA replica pattern in front of the Stereolithography Additive Manufacturing machine that made it

Castings Technology International (Cti) has come to the aid of a multinational company after key component failures impacted production. The company called upon Cti to assess how quickly it might be able to make replacement components after stocks of their spares ran out. It took Cti just three weeks to reverse engineer the component from a high strength steel and manufacture the first of 72 precision engineered castings and, following extensive quality control procedures, the first batch was delivered, replenishing the plant’s depleted stocks.

“We worked evenings, Saturdays and Sundays as appropriate to mitigate the client’s losses. It exemplifies our ability and willingness to deliver complex castings in a fraction of the lead-time required by traditional foundries when a client hits trouble,” said Richard Gould Commercial Manager at Cti, which is component of the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing, based at Catcliffe, near Rotherham. Casting Technology International worked from a damaged component removed from failed equipment. Specialists from Cti’s laboratory and testing division used spectroanalysis to identify the material from which the component had originally been made and laser scanning technology to take measurements, which were fed into a Computer Aided Design system to create a 3D CAD model.